KiwiRail has sold the former manager’s office at its Hillside Workshops redevelopment for $1 to the Southern Heritage Trust, which plans to refurbish it for use as a tenanted office and meeting space for community groups and charitable trusts.
Southern Heritage Trust chairwoman Jo Galer said the refurbishment would take about a year and a-half to complete and was expected to cost up to a million dollars.
The "landmark" building was in the middle of Hillside Rd and would be an "incredible asset" for South Dunedin.
The Southern Heritage Trust had joined forces with the Takutai Trust, an Auckland-based organisation which was financing the project.
Discussions with KiwiRail began about two years ago, at a time when it was "adamant" the building had to come down, Ms Galer said.
"We negotiated for a long time with KiwiRail, and in the end they agreed very kindly, and with a lot of foresight and a lot of community spiritedness, to keep the building and allow us to essentially have the building."
KiwiRail had sold the heritage trust the building for $1 and its members were "relieved" and "absolutely stoked" it had been given a new lease on life.
The leasehold space, which the trusts were considering naming "Hillside", would honour the railway workers and their families
A planned downstairs exhibition space would display memorabilia and photographs of the workshops.
"That community has put their blood, sweat and tears into Hillside over the years, and they should be remembered for their work.
"They’re the people that allowed that industry to prosper, to thrive, and they deserve the memory to remain."
The trust was working with the Dunedin City Council on resource consents and hoped to announce a contract with a developer within the next couple of weeks, Ms Galer said.
A KiwiRail spokesman said the possibility of the old manager’s building staying on site was "well-progressed but is still subject to final conditions".
The two-storey building, believed to date back to the 1920s, was surplus to requirements and had been sold to the trust for a nominal fee with the potential of being used as a rail museum.
The building had asbestos contamination issues that would need to be remediated before being used as a public space, the spokesman said.
